Longevity & 3D Legacies -2

Imagine you walk right up to Jeremey Bentham’s Auto-icon cabinet in the UCL South Cloisters today and after you tweet on the Panopticam Stream, you actually sit down to interview and interact with him. Well something short of that worked in my head when I visited him in London.

Now after watching a short You Tube clip of the 3D New Dimensions in Testimony project, I can’t help but think how great it would have been if this technology was available in early stage 19th century. So let’s say that back then, Mr. Bentham meets the folks from the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California. He asks for his promise of longevity, that his testimony of life and times be preserved more dynamically in an interactive interview.

Two hundred years later, his request becomes reality, maybe not for him but for Holocaust survivors in this New Dimensions project, as they speak with future generations in “simulated, educational conversations” leaving their testimonies long after they have passed on through the fourth dimension of time.

One day this marvel of Light Stage technology will likely be commonplace and even further enhanced to serve that higher purpose of learning so that history continues to draw connections with more immediacy. And that’s it; the design of this project allows students to ask their own questions of this 3D video auto-icon and the interviewee pre-recorded, responds on spot. This digital after life has its merits.